“Halt!” Nathan cried, calling more wizard’s fire into his hand to threaten Enoch directly. “I’ll incinerate you, First Commander.”
The veteran just laughed at him from the saddle. “Then who will stop my men from wreaking havoc throughout the town? Or, I can call them off now—if you capitulate.” His words were quieter than the screams and the clashing blades. Several homes and shops were already on fire as the raiders cast torches. He reiterated in a hard but reasonable voice, “All we want is the food. The people don’t need to die. But if you force us to burn the village to the ground, that guilt is on your shoulders.”
Nathan struggled to find some other solution, and a dozen more people died during his brief pause. A wailing young girl ran to her mother just before a soldier killed them both, and they died in each other’s arms.
“Stop!” Renn wailed. “Please stop!”
Ruva returned his poisonous gaze. “I can fight both of you if you like. I’d love to pull the bones one by one from your skin.”
Though he ached to save Hanavir, Nathan couldn’t battle the entire army on such a widespread front. How many villagers would die in the meantime?
The soldiers had rounded up a hundred panicked men and women, including the old mayor, all of whom raised their hands in surrender. The soldiers lifted their swords for a mass execution, and Enoch turned to Nathan and Renn, raising his hand, ready to give a signal.
“Stop!” Nathan groaned. “Don’t kill any more of them.”
“Then cease your resistance,” Enoch said. “Now.”
“Give the order,” Renn cried as the screams continued. “Tell them to stop killing!”
The first commander waved his hand, and shouts went up and down the line. “Enough bloodshed for now! We need workers to load the supplies.” He snorted. “Do not make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
Furious, feeling like a failure, Nathan struggled to contain his gift, knowing that if he unleashed his magic, Enoch would retaliate with a vengeful massacre. He wanted to incinerate the old veteran the moment he saw an opportunity that wouldn’t result in countless more deaths.
“Take the wizards back with us,” Ruva said, sitting proudly on her mare. “General Utros will love having them as prisoners. My sister and I can dissect them to find the magic inside.”
Renn shouted, “I’ll kill both you and your sister. For Lani!”
Nathan thought strategically, though. He whispered to Renn, “We don’t dare let them capture us.”
From the streets of Hanavir, he summoned the wind, manipulating it like a weaver with fine silken threads. He pulled smoke from the burning buildings, dragged it closer to them like thick and acrid curtains. Before Enoch could issue a command, Nathan whipped the whirlwind of smoke around them, twirling it like poisonous veils to camouflage himself and Renn. He grabbed the other man’s maroon sleeve. “Come, we have to run!”
They darted through the streets as the smoke thickened, covering their retreat and leaving behind Ruva’s screams of rage at being cheated.
Nathan’s heart was heavy because they had failed to save Hanavir. The two wizards themselves had barely escaped.
He hoped the other parties were more successful.
CHAPTER 8
After he endured another day of exhausting work on the river, seeing no chance to escape, Bannon collapsed on the open deck near the bow of King Grieve’s ship. As night fell, stars began to sparkle overhead, but the new constellations seemed very far away and unable to help him. Nevertheless, Bannon would fend for himself and save as many of these people as he could. That was what he held on to.
The other fifty or so slaves from Ildakar groaned and whimpered as they were tied or chained securely to the decks. In darkness, the swamp sounds grew louder as predators emerged from the muddy banks and thick underbrush.
Though Bannon didn’t bemoan his circumstance, he felt determined and angry. His beaten body was bruised, his muscles sore. Hunger clawed like a beast inside his stomach. He knew the other slaves were in as much misery.
After days of intense activity, many damaged ships had been partially repaired. The ruined hulks had been stripped bare, leaving only skeletons of wood. Masts and yardarms were replaced, rigging ropes restrung, broken hulls patched, bilges pumped dry. Bannon had looked for opportunities to sabotage the repairs, and he had left flaws in some of the vessels, but not enough to cause the disaster he needed to inflict.
Seven slaves had died so far during the work, and Bannon could tell that many others were ready to perish from sheer exhaustion. But he was in better shape than these others. While held in the combat pits in Ildakar, Bannon had been trained and toughened to fight; the rest of the Ildakar captives, though, had led soft and prosperous lives. They wouldn’t last much longer as slaves of the Norukai.
Impatient to launch his war, King Grieve took out his ire on his own people. That afternoon, he roared at Gara and two other shipwrights. “Faster! I need ships now. We must sail back to the Norukai islands.”
“Four will be ready and provisioned tonight, my king, my Grieve,” said Gara, cringing deferentially. Her braids flopped from side to side. “I promise.”
Now, Bannon crouched on the deck with his wrists tied and ankles chained to an anchor bolt. Repairing the serpent ships was horrific work, but he knew his situation would be worse once the raiding fleet set off down the river, taking him and the other captives. After the serpent ships sailed away, Bannon could never find his way back to the site of Ildakar.
His heart ached over the loss of the city, as well as his friends. Despite its dark flaws and ugly secrets, Ildakar had great potential. With the overthrow of Sovrena Thora, it could have been a magnificent city again. Lila had wanted Bannon to stay, but now she was gone, and his heart ached even more. He realized he didn’t just miss the young woman’s company as a protector and fighter. She had cared for him, guarded him at first out of a sense of duty, but it had become more than that.
Nathan was gone, too, but Bannon hoped the wizard was still alive. Now that his gift was restored, no one would trifle with Nathan Rahl. And Nicci?.?.?.?she had been cut off somewhere when Ildakar vanished.
Bannon doubted he would see any of them again. He was trapped here alone, chained to the deck of a Norukai ship. “Sweet Sea Mother,” he mumbled. But he would not surrender his optimism. There must be a way he could survive and help defeat the hated Norukai.
As the deceptively soothing swamp noises grew louder, Bannon’s stomach growled. The slaves had to drink dirty river water from buckets. When some of them spewed the water back up, the gruff Norukai would splash another bucket over their faces to wash away the vomit and keep the stink from lingering on the deck.
In the thickening darkness, Bannon saw lanterns lit on the decks of the many ships lashed together in the current. Grieve’s ship and three others were anchored together near the shore, ready to depart, and the king did not intend to wait. He would leave the rest of his fleet behind.
Two Norukai men walked along the torchlit deck carrying a wooden tub between them. They stopped at the first group of bound slaves and set down the heavy tub. One man lifted a ladle that dripped a slurry of fish guts and river water. “Dinner!”
The first slave turned his head away in disgust, but the Norukai dumped the contents on the bound man’s face anyway. Wet entrails ran down his chin, and when the slave realized this was all the food he would get, he tried to slurp some of the entrails. Learning the lesson, the next slave braced himself and opened his mouth, so the Norukai ladled the nauseating mess onto his face.
Prancing behind the two men, Chalk hopped from one foot to the other. “Dinnertime, dinnertime! My fish, your fish!” He scooped a long-fingered hand into the wooden tub and rewarded himself with a fish head, which he tossed in the air and caught with his mouth like a trained dog. Crunching down on the scales, he came closer to Bannon. “Fishes tried to eat me, and now I eat them!” In the light of the rising moon the puckered
scars were prominent on his albino skin. Bannon wondered what had happened to him, what the shaman had endured, what ordeal had created those scars and driven him to the edge of madness. “They didn’t eat enough of you,” Bannon said under his breath.
Chalk hopped over to him and squatted down. “They ate just enough. Razorfish nibbled my arms, nibbled my legs, and nibbled between them.” He clamped a palm against his loincloth-covered crotch. “They took much away, but they gave me something, too.” He leaned so close to Bannon that the young man could smell the rotting fish in his mouth. “That gave me my power! I see things. I know the future, the fire in the towns, the blood on the swords, so many screams. But good screams, I think.”
“Are they the screams of dying Norukai?” Bannon asked, but the shaman seemed oblivious to his vitriol.
Chalk cocked his head as if listening to whispered voices. “Yes, some of them are Norukai screams.” He sounded as if he was imparting a secret.
